Recently, I ordered Reprolabel sets for Beast Hunters Smokescreen, and for Masterpiece Sideswipe. After hours of painstakingly applying them, and an equal amount of time spent cursing them, I finally finished and took a few photo's.
It was a painstaking process, but years of practice with Panini football sticker books has stood me in good stead, and lead to this moment.
Hit the jump for some pictures and brief thoughts of the set for Smokescreen
Car Mode
First thing to notice, is that the stickers cover almost the entire the care. The lights, the hood, the roof, the spoiler, the doors, the tail end and even the front bumper all covered in stickers.
But the improvement is quite dramatic, and Smokescreen looks miles better.
You gain an awful lot of detail from this sticker set, and it gives it a slightly cartoonish appearance in some places. This is most notable in the lights, which whilst being a massive improvement, doe look like they are from a cartoon.
They still look great, but they do stand out.
You also get a more expanded blue area for his bonnet, which is beautiful and shiny. One of the problems that arises here, is as the Autobot logo is split across both halves, its really hard to get it lined up to look smooth.
You can see the best I could manage, and I spent hours attempting it.
This sticker sheet is designed to make Smokescreen show accurate, so that means the doors are completely changed. You get the more accurate 38 and chequered flag deco, but due to the shape of the door, to get the red stripe, it means adding another sticker entirely. I was expecting this to be really difficult to line up, but amazingly these bits went on pretty easily.
Also visible is some silver stickers which go around the vents next to the doors, and a shiny blue sticker around the rear wheel. The blue is there to replace the paint app, to make it look nicer and the silver vent outline stickers really surprised me by adding a huge amount and bringing out detail you otherwise would not really care for.
The rear of the car also benefits from a reprolabels overhaul. Lots and lots of stickers here to really improve the look of it. I think there are 18 separate stickers there, and the blend so well you really cannot tell that.
The license plate is a bit of a downer as it does not really line up. That's not reprolabels fault, as its completely down to the mold, but it does stand out.
I can't tell you how many times I cursed the toy out loud trying to line up the license plate stickers.
There are also new stickers to completely replace the details on the roof, rear windows, and spoiler.
What really struck me about this set, was just how easy most of the stickers were to apply. So many of them almost placed themselves, and when they didn't, were easy enough to lift off with tweezers and try again.
The car mode looks completely different, and far better for this set.
Robot Mode
Just like the vehicle mode, the set drastically alters the robot mode. I can't tell you exactly how many stickers are in use here, but applying them it felt like thousands.
Almost every surface has stickers applied to make it look as close to the show model as possible.
The chest is the most obvious thing, and that sticker expands and enhances that design. This is where I ran into my main problem with this set, as you can see in the picture - it ripped.
Mostly this was my own fault, for constantly peeling it off and sticking it back down, but due to point running down the middle of the chest, the sticker has to fold. Mine just would not do it without creasing somewhere, no matter what I tried, and the result was it ripped.
its far less visible to actual eyes than a hi-tech camera, thankfully.
The other section that was a bit tough, was the crotch. If you had told me 10 years ago, that I would one day be painstakingly using tweezers to apply tiny black stickers to a toy robots crotch area - I would probably have spent even more time in the gym.
There an insane amount of tiny details that make up this set, and whoever at Reprolabels designed it - really went that extra 50 miles.
So much is added, its tough to mention it all, but particularly you get his red "horns" on his head, his legs are covered to be more accurate colours, his feet gets a ton of stickers, his arms are covered and have show accurate details instead, and he gets those little red pointy bits on his shoulders. Oh, and the lights are stickered over, so his chest looks less like an angry demon face, and more like a scowling cat face...
Saying I had a lot of fun applying this set, would possibly be overstating things, but it was not a horrible set to apply. Yes, there are so many stickers that at first it seems quite daunting, and some of them are so tiny you might think Reprolabels are playing a trick on you, but overall its fairly easy to apply. Obviously I ripped the chest sticker, but I am sure someone with far more patience than me would not have as much of a problem that I did.
Its a wonderful set, that massively improves the figure, and I would go so far as to say if you are collector who is going to display the figure on a shelf - its an essential purchase.
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